Frustration and Aggression: By John Dollard, Neal E. Miller, Leonard W. Dood, O. H. Mowrer and Robert R. Sears, in collaboration with Clellan S. Ford, Carl Iver Hovland and Richard T. Sollenberger. (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd., London, 1944. Pp. ix + 150. Price, 10 s. 6 d.)

This book now appears as a volume in the 'International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction', edited by Dr. Karl Mannheim. It was originally published in America in 1939 by the Institute of Human Relations, Yale University. In a Foreword (pp. vii, viii) the Director says that it illustrates two aspects of the work of this institute, i.e. co-operative research (true pooling, the most exacting form of collaboration) and an induction-deduction procedure of enquiry which he considers to be the 'road which all social enquiry that aspires to become truly scientific must eventually follow'. A problem is chosen, examined and delimited; a tentative hypothesis is formulated which can be used as a guide to further enquiries yielding better systematized data; these in turn confirm or modify the initial hypothesis; the hope is that a point will be reached at which mathematical methods can be employed as usefully as in physics. The general problem of method in the human sciences which is here raised is too vast for discussion in a review.

The special problem considered in this book is that of aggressive behaviour. The tentative hypothesis used is admittedly much influenced by Freud's earlier conception of aggression as reaction to frustration but not by his later work. The basic assumption is that 'aggression is always a consequence of frustration. More specifically the proposition is that the occurrence of aggressive behaviour always presupposes the existence of frustration and, contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression' (p. 1).

The psycho-analyst will find it difficult to think of frustration and aggression in purely 'behavioural' terms; he may be ready to agree that frustration (of internal or external origin) inevitably evokes aggressive impulses (unconscious or conscious), but he knows that these impulses may result only in endopsychic modifications and may not obtain motor discharge, either immediate or delayed